Adrenaline rush: Delaying epinephrine shots after cardiac arrest cuts survival rates
Hospitals in which the administration of epinephrine to patients whose hearts have stopped is delayed beyond five minutes have significantly lower survival rates of those patients, a new study led by a cardiologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center finds. Using data from a large registry, the national team of cardiologists found that nearly 13 percent of patients survived cardiac arrest when epinephrine shots were given within the first five minutes of the heart stopping, compared to about 11 percent when the epinephrine was given after five minutes, independent of all other aspects of care. "That is a 20 percent better survival rate for patients at hospitals where epinephrine is given quickly, which is a big difference," said Dr. Rohan Khera, a Cardiology Division fellow at UT Southwestern and the first author on the study published online in the journal Circulation . Delays in giving the epinephrine shots also had a negative effect on functional recovery, the r...